Vendor User Groups, Friends or Foes?

How is your support from your software vendors?  Have they disappeared now that you are Live or have been using their system for awhile? 

Relationships change.  You know the drill.  When a vendor is courting you, "you are the most important client", "we will be by your side the whole way", "you will be a showcase account for us", "yada, yada". Then . . . it happens.  A new prospect comes into their view - a bigger catch, providing greater visibility for the vendor and, oh yeah,  spending more money.  Before you know it, you are kicked to the curb like someone you met at a college keg party at closing time . . .

Users of information systems rely heavily on their vendors for application support, training, release upgrades, and best practice advice. While working directly with your support representatives is one way of getting the information you need, many organizations are turning to vendor user groups.

There are ways to make sure that a user group works for you.

1) Develop a relationship with the user group board or become a board member.  This will help facilitate attention to your issues and provide access to other vendor resources.

2)  Develop a good relationship with the vendor representative who works with the user group.  Make sure that the representative understands that the purpose of the user group is to facilitate better use of the vendor's system and that it can provide excellent feedback to the vendor for future development initiatives.  Basically, explain that working together,  rather than against each other, is a win/win situation.

3)  Volunteer to be a beta site for enhancements or new releases.  This will allow you to get enhancements sooner and also provide you with increased support from the vendor.  Just remember that being a beta site may expose you to some risk with regard to application stability.

4) Use vendor user groups as methods to attract or recruit new employees.  Typically other user group attendees have the skill sets you desire.

5)  Utilize user group meetings as educational perks for employees.  It is a great opportunity for your staff to interact with their peers and bring back ideas as to how your facility can better utilize the applications.

With that said, the reality is that there are more non-vendor-sponsored user groups than there are vendor-sponsored groups.  These groups offer more client-to-client interaction, are usually more objective (vendor solution value) and can prepare you for future dealings with the vendor with discussions of issues already experienced by others.

Which user group structure do you prefer?  Are vendor-sponsored user groups more selling or service oriented?  Are non-vendor-sanctioned user groups just areas to voice complaints without solutions?

By the way, that kicked to the curb comment - I can still feel myself hitting the pavement.